Witnesses recount Brandon Charles' final moments and death in emotional afternoon of testimony

It’s a sight that will stick with all of those present in Washtenaw County Trial Court Judge Archie Brown’s courtroom during this trial.

The image of Brandon Charles’ lifeless body hanging out of the passenger door of a white Ford Fusion — mouth agape, blood already staining his shirt and five bullets freshly burrowed into his flesh — was another shocking piece of evidence in a trial full of them.

Thursday afternoon’s testimony left many in tears with the playing of 911 calls from Charles’ homicide on Jan. 29, 2013 and the initial shooting of him and his girlfriend on Interstate 94 on Jan. 1, 2013. Several witnesses, including his fiance, recounted their final times seeing Charles.

Charles’ fiance, whose testimony occupied much of Thursday afternoon’s proceedings, said she was supposed to watch a movie with Charles that night. She last saw him earlier in the day at the home he shared with her and their daughter.

“He came by and we came outside and he talked with her,” she said through tears. “And then my nurse had came, we got broke up a little bit. I told him I would see him later and we were supposed to watch a movie. I went in the house and he left.”

The name of Charles’ fiance and other witnesses are being withheld by The Ann Arbor News because they are afraid of retaliation by Willie Wimberly, 31, or his associates.

Wimberly is charged with open murder, conspiracy to commit first-degree premeditated murder, being in possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony, carrying a concealed weapon and being a felon in possession of a firearm.

Terrance Parker, 22, faces charges of open murder, conspiracy to commit first-degree premeditated murder, being in possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony and carrying a concealed weapon.

Both Charles’ fiance and a good friend of Charles testified he’d spoken about possibly being bribed to not testify against Wimberly in the freeway shooting. One of the people charged in that incident, Steven Smith-Rush, knew Charles.

Charles’ fiance said he had talked to her once about possibly being bribed to testify. She said he told her someone had told him to name their price

“I told him that whoever is saying this, you shouldn’t trust them and you don’t need to talk to them,” she said. She added, “It was like he heard what I said and that was it.”

Charles’ friend said he had heard rumors Charles was going to take a bribe.

“I asked him, I heard he was going to take a bribe and he said no,” Charles’ friend said. “He said he’d be up $20,000 (the next week) but he didn’t say from what.”

Charles left that friend’s house and ended up meeting up with his friend, Robert Bow.

Bow spent time with Charles in his final minutes. He lived at the home in the 600 block of Calder Avenue where the shooting took place.

Bow said he hung out with Charles for a few minutes in the Ford Fusion before going to Charles’ cousin’s house. They visited with Charles’ cousin for a few minutes before going back to the Calder home.

Bow said a green Pontiac G6 pulled up across the street from the home and the driver got out. Bow recognized the man from the neighborhood, and later found out his name was Avantis Parker. Avantis approached the car and, after trying to get in the passenger seat where Bow was sitting and then walking around the vehicle, began talking with Charles.

“They began having a conversation about Activus,” Bow said. Activus is another name of prescription codeine cough syrup.

Bow said Avantis was telling Charles that his brother wanted to sell him the drug. Charles wasn’t immediately interested but then told Avantis to go get it from his brother and bring it over.

Avantis insisted his brother bring it over.

“He said his brother would be weirded out and he would think he was trying to mess him over with the money,” Bow said.

Bow described seeing Avantis walk back to the G6, get in the driver’s seat and then exit a short time later. During the time Avantis went back to the vehicle, Bow got out and went back toward his home.

He could see Avantis coming toward the vehicle and another man — described as 5-feet-5 to 5-feet-6 inches tall, dark skinned and wearing a red baseball cap — standing in the middle of the street. About 10 seconds after he closed the door to the home, Bow heard gunshots.

A video camera at a home across the street managed to catch what happened next. A figure — it’s impossible to identify faces on the video — walks back toward the G6 before starting to run. A second figure could be seen sprinting away from the G6 and getting in the passenger side. The G6 then pulls out at a high rate of speed.

Bow, on cross-examination, could not identify Wimberly or Terrance. He said he could not identify the man in the red baseball cap.

A neighbor, and friend of Bow’s, said she heard the gunshots but didn’t look outside.

“Where I live at, when you hear gunfire you don’t go toward the windows or the door,” she said.

She said Bow ran down the street to her home and she followed him back to the Ford Fusion. She said she opened the door and checked on Charles, who groaned when she touched his neck checking for a pulse.

“He was still alive when I got to the car,” she said.

A myriad voices could be heard on the desperate 911 call, with a man screaming “Oh my god, dude, oh my f---ing god!” and the neighbor telling dispatchers she didn’t know anything about the shooting.

Charles could be heard groaning in the background of the call. By the time police and Huron Valley Ambulance paramedics got on scene, he was dead.

Washtenaw County Sheriff’s Office Deputy John Campbell was among the first responders. He said he was the one who opened the passenger-side door, allowing Charles to assume the posture in the photo — the sight of which caused one woman to get up screaming during testimony and punch a courtroom door in anger.

“He wasn’t breathing at the time, his eyes were fixed and dilated, he wasn’t moving,” Campbell said.

Charles was found with $2,900 in cash and a little more than six grams of marijuana on him, Detective Thomas Sinks testified. His cellphone showed recent text messages with someone saved in his phone as “AP,” believed to be Avantis Parker.

Sinks explained many photos shown to jurors, including some that showed the trajectory of bullets fired into the car. However, the lawyers for Terrance and Wimberly — Byron Nolen and Lillian Diallo, respectively — pointed out that the investigation revealed no fingerprints or DNA from their clients in the Fusion or the G6.

The most prolonged periods of questioning during Thursday afternoon’s proceedings came when Diallo cross-examined Charles’ fiance. However, Diallo focused almost the entirety of her questioning toward Charles’ fiance about statements made in the court case for the freeway shooting. The fiance said she was shot nine times during the incident.

The line of questioning came on the heels of Nolen’s complaints about the possible retrying of the freeway shooting case during the homicide trial.

The trial resumes at 8:30 a.m. Friday for a full day of testimony.

Kyle Feldscher covers cops and courts for The Ann Arbor News. He can be reached at kylefeldscher@mlive.com or you can follow him on Twitter. Find all Washtenaw County crime stories here.